The format for $GREED changed a bit this year. A second
round of turns was added to the tournament so that the top eight
scorers in the first round advanced to the second round with
the highest cumulative total for the four turns winning the tournament.
I made this format change for numerous reasons but mainly: 1)
to add some decision making, 2) to reduce the number of zero
scores, 3) to lower overall scores, 4) to add some suspense and
5) to more closely resemble the actual game of $GREED.
I felt the changes were successful in achieving most, if not
all, of these goals.

In order to keep the time to about an hour, two tables were
run simultaneously in the first round. David Metzger postied
the first non-zero score at 700 points. Immediately after David
posted his score, Rebecca Hebner scored the highest cumulative
first round score of 2350, which included a set of 4 "D"s
for 1000 points on her second roll. Dennis Nicholson posted the
first non-zero score at the other table with 1250 points. Bill
Place and Thomas Stokes tied for the top scoring single turn
in the first round when each of them scored 1700 points on their
respective second turns. Thomas was helped in compiling the 1700
points in the second turn by rolling a 1000-point scoring combination
of "$GREED". Jeff Finkeldey used the same 1000-point
scoring combination on his second turn to accumulate 1750 points
for his two rolls in the first round. Meanwhile, Phil Bradley
managed to roll a combination of "$GREED" on his first
roll of the dice for his second turn, but then failed to get
any scoring combination on the next roll of all six dice and
lost the 1000 points. Rich Curtin scored 1600 points on his first
turn (including 1000 points for another "$GREED" combination),
and 2000 points total to qualify for the second round. Andy
Gardner was the first player to bump another score off the qualification
list by scoring 900 points, eliminating David Metzger's 700.
Michael Destro rolled a set of four "D's for 1000 points
and accumulated 1550 points on his second turn before he pressed
his luck and ended up losing it all. Finally, Henry Richardson
used "$GREED" to post a score of 1900 points to be
the last qualifier for the second round. The score needed to
qualify for the second round of the tournament ended up being
1600 points with the highest score being Rebecca's 2350.

In the second round, each player in reverse scoring order
took one turn at a time. Ken Gutermuth was first to roll and
scored 400 points, giving him 2000 to putll within striking distance
of the leader. The next two players, John
Jacoby and Thomas Stokes, failed to scored and remained at 1700
points. William Place went next and scored 800 points on his
first roll to take the lead at 2500. Jeff Finkeldey was next
and failed to score, to remain at 1750. Henry Richardson then
scored 700 to take the lead at 2600. Rich Curtin didn't score
and remained at 2000 points. Finally, the first round leader,
Rebecca Hebner, scored 300 points to reclaim the lead at 2650.

The final turns of the second round started off badly as everyone
tried to pull ahead of Rebecca. The first five players failed
to score. Finally, the sixth player, Henry Richardson, managed
to chalk up 600, giving him a total of 3200 and the lead. Rich
Curtin couldn't produce enough to pass Henry and ended up scoring
nothing for his last turn. This left Rebecca as the last challenger
to Henry - some 600 points behind. Her first roll yielded a set
of 3 "R"s and a single "D" for 500. She
needed to roll the remaining two dice and get one more "D"
to win. She got not only the "D" but a "G"
as well, which is also a scoring combination. Rebecca had to
score both the "D" and the "G" and roll all
six dice again. If she failed to get a scoring combination, she
would lose the 650 points and Henry would win. Rebecca rolled
the six dice and breathed a sigh of relief, as there was at least
one scoring combination. She had scored with all six dice on
a set of four "D"s, another single "D" and
a single "G" for an additional 1150 points. However,
by scoring with all six dice, Rebecca had to roll all six again.
At this point, Rebecca was heard to exclaim, "Just make
it stop." True to her plea, the dice yielded a set of three
green "E"s, two "D"s and a single "R".
Since the "R"was not part of a scoring combination,
she scored an additional 500 points for a final turn score of
2300 points and 4950 total ... earning her the second of four
plaques for the week. Perhaps it is true that luck is a lady
as the fair gender has taken this event three years in a row.

The new format did seem to accomplish the goal of reducing
the scores since the highest first round score was 2350 points
in comparison to the winning score of 3400 points (for two turns)
in 2000. In addition, we saw a drastic reduction in the percentage
of players shut out in the first round. The percentage of zero
scores increased from 61.1% in 1998 to 76.9% in
1999 and then up again to 80.7% in 2000. This year, only 51 of
the 80 participants, or 63.8%, were shut out.

The GM would like the participants to let him know if the
new format was an improvement . In addition, if we use the same
format next year, the GM would like to have increase the number
of tables running concurrently in the first round, so if anyone
could bring a set of $GREED dice next year, notify him. Finally,
the GM would like to thank his assistant GMs, Ken Gutermuth and
Ken Samuel, and the two volunteers who recorded all of the scores
at the tables, Debbie Garver and Richard Irving, for their assistance
in running the two tables allowing me to oversee the whole tournament
and maintain the scores on the "leader" board.